Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch

Changing the World

(Reprinted from the issue of March 17, 2005)

The March 14 issue of Newsweek features two articles that rather optimistically assess the impact of George W. Bush’s war policy in the Mideast: Democracy is breaking out all over. Superficially, it all sounds very promising.

But a very different article, apparently unrelated, in the same issue of the magazine, throws another light on the matter. Ellis Cose recalls the prescient 1965 warnings of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan about the sorry state of the black family.

Moynihan was a thinker of great though erratic insight whose errors shouldn’t deter us from honoring the truths he discerned, especially those that antagonized more conventional liberals. He had a real streak of Burkean conservatism in him.

Critics at the time accused Moynihan of racism (of course); never mind that his diagnoses and predictions proved accurate. A prophet is without honor in his own sociology department.

Not only are things much worse today, Cose notes; what Moynihan said about blacks has also turned out to be true of the whole American population: “Roughly a third of American births are to single women, as are nearly a third of all non-Hispanic white births. White women under 25 are more likely to have a child out of wedlock than in.”

Once again we are driven to reflect that we now take for granted things that, if predicted a few decades ago, would have made our blood freeze. Illegitimate birth was then a cruel shame, but only because it was so rare; today one hesitates to ask a child if he knows who his father is.

The very meaning of poverty has undergone an ominous change. At one time we could assume that poor families were families, headed by a man who had a job, however modest. The welfare state has made that a remote memory. We could also assume that the poor family existed within a society and culture that believed in God and maintained certain moral standards; again, the government has construed the U.S. Constitution to do away with all that.

So the American child born today (and lucky enough not to have been contraceived or aborted) is less likely than ever to live with both parents. In any case, he will be the subject of a predatory anti-family culture and an equally predatory government that has already heaped huge debt on him before he has emerged from the womb. He is also more likely than ever to wind up a criminal, since a larger portion of the American population than of any other is in prison.

Do we dare to tell this child that he has been born free?

And in what way is this government a model of freedom for the world? Is it entitled to claim that its wars to remake other countries in its own image are extending freedom? I’m afraid that these wars may succeed only too well, destroying the traditional social fabric of Muslim lands and bringing on them the kind of ruin we have inflicted on ourselves. Today’s American democracy is no model for the world to imitate.
 
Benign Neglect

Moynihan in 1965 had hit on something deeper than he could have realized about the impact of the modern state on the family. He went on to prescribe a period of “benign neglect” in government attempts to help minorities. Though the phrase angered liberals, this was wise advice. It may be applicable to foreign policy too. What liberals, including neoconservatives, call “isolationism” may be benign neglect on a global scale.

If we step back from the official propaganda, we see a startling pattern. The United States hasn’t faced even a small foreign invasion in nearly two centuries. American wars are now less like campaigns of genuine defense than ambitious government programs to improve other countries by democratizing them.

Bush himself was once skeptical about “nation-building,” or what socialists used to call “building a new society” — hard enough to do at home, let alone across oceans. Societies are only “built” slowly, from within, by custom and tradition. War (including the organized force of centralizing government) can only disrupt them.

Why has Bush abandoned his own healthy instinct for peace in order to pursue a utopian strategy of war? Alas, every short-term military success encourages him to believe he can achieve his goal of universal democracy.
 
The Fatal Compromise

Ever since Sen. Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgment that abortion isn’t always a joyous experience, we’ve been bombarded by articles proclaiming that the glad hour is upon us when the pro-life and “pro-choice” sides may find a common ground.

All it will take is for the pro-lifers to be “reasonable” and support government-sponsored birth control.

Not surprisingly, this is the line taken by Andrew Sullivan in Time. Sullivan, a gifted writer, is the very model of a “reasonable” Catholic: homosexual, an advocate of same-sex “marriage,” and so forth. (He has announced that he has ceased to attend Mass because of the Church’s disapproval of sodomy.)

Sullivan starts with what “we can all agree” on: “We surely all want to lower the number of abortions.” Do we, really? Even those who make money on the practice? Well, let that pass. “The pro-life Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, has a bill called the Prevention First Act that would expand access to birth control.”

Ah, yes. A new government program will solve the whole problem.

“What’s the downside? I cannot see any,” Sullivan exults. Well, there is one little hitch, just as you might expect: “Alas, the pro-life side is leery.” Some of them oppose all birth-control devices, or adoption by homosexual couples, or they may just fear that fewer abortions will take the urgency out of their cause. Only such cranks obstruct a settlement between the two sides now.

But what Sullivan really wants is for the two sides to become one, united in acceptance of the sexual revolution. “We are all sodomites now,” he rejoiced a few months ago, because “we” (practically all of us!) agree that sexual pleasure is an end in itself. Even most (practically all!) Catholic couples contraceive, so no principle is at stake.

Such polemics by avowed Catholics are always notable for avoiding the very idea of chastity; they never mention the word. (They may admit that abstinence “works.”) Nor do they mention the examples of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, or the saints. It would seem that Catholics and Christians in general are summoned to nothing higher than a tame suburban hedonism, with Mama on the pill.

All we need to do, in other words, is to give up one of the essential Christian virtues, and we can all live comfortably ever after. Give the enemy what he really wants, and there will be peace.


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Joseph Sobran